The above related application is directed to a battery operated computer having a sophisticated power management system. Such computer has two processors, a main processor and a power management processor (PMP). The main processor operates under the control of an operating system and provides overall control of the computer for executing application programs. The main processor also assists in power management by executing power management interrupt handlers and controlling a power control register to turn power on and off to various devices. The power management processor monitors ambient temperature and humidity, and battery conditions, and generates interrupts as a result of predetermined changes. Such processor also controls charging of the battery. Logic means are responsive to predetermined conditions to also generate interrupts.
An interrupt controller is connected to the main processor and receives the power management interrupts (PMIs). When such a computer is turned on or is rebooted, it is necessary to initialize the system and enable the PMIs. This enablement links the appropriate interrupt handlers to the PMIs. In a prior art battery operated computer, specifically the IBM model PC-Convertible computer, the initialization including PMI enablement was done during a power on self test (POST). This method can not be used with OS/2 because a protect mode interrupt handler is not loaded until after the OS/2 kernel loads. The prior art technique would allow power management interrupts to occur during the 0S/2 load process and since no handler is available at that time, such interrupt would cause the processor to become unstable and crash.